SOUNDTRACK: THE SPACE NEGROS Do Generic Ethnic Muzak Versions of All Your Favorite Punk/Psychedelic Songs from the Sixties (1987).
I stumbled upon this CD again when I was looking for a Sparklehorse disc (alphabetical you see). I originally discovered this album when I was a DJ in college and the absurdity of the title instantly grabbed me.
And never has a title so accurately described the music within (except for “the space negros” part which is just weird). Anyhow, the disc is indeed a collection of generic ethnic muzak recordings. But it predates that late 90’s “ironic” muzaky recordings of hipster songs.
Nevertheless, it is muzaky background versions of songs from the sixties (and a few originals). The difference comes in the instrumentation: zithers, harpsichords, clarinets, autoharp, etc. In other words, this isn’t a guy making cheesy Casio recordings of classic songs. This is a collection of musicians reinterpreting songs for fun (and presumably to get high to?).
The most noteworthy songs for me are “Silas Stingy/Boris the Spider” medley and The Stooges’ “We Will Fall.” In fact, I didn’t recognize any of the other songs on the disc (the 13th Floor Elevators and The Electric Prunes are the only bands that I recognize aside from The Who and The Stooges).
So, this is clearly a labor of love. Whether or not you will love it depends on your tolerance for trippy muzaky renditions of songs that sound like they’re from an Indian restaurant/hash shop circa 1964 (that exists on the moon?). The CD reissue includes thirty more minutes of tunes which are all just listed as More Generic Muzak (no covers here). It’s strange that these more nebulous bonus tracks really tend to show off how good the rest of the disc is. Sure in part that’s because the other tracks are actual songs, but it also shows how well the weird musical approach to these songs works when it is focused with a good starting point.
The Space Negros (headed by Erik Lindgren) made several discs, but it’s hard to find a lot of information about them online. Even their own website is surprisingly devoid of information (although you can buy the disc!)
[READ: April 19, 2010] “Prefiguration of Lalo Curo”
Even when I try to stop reading Bolaño, the stories keep arriving in my mailbox. This story (to be released in his forthcoming story collection The Return) looks at the history of Lalo Curo. For those of us reading 2666, Lalo Curo figures prominently in The Part About the Crimes. And in 2666 his history is given. So this short story is a bit confusing within the canon of Bolaño. 2666
In this one, Lalo’s mother, rather than being raped and impregnated as a young girl (as had all of her mother’s mothers) was a porn star. Lalo was born Olegario Cura (surname Cura (The Priest) because his father was a priest). And, as with all my favorite Bolaño stories, there’s all kinds of fun questions regarding narrator and intended reader. Lalo’s mother “Connie Sánchez was her name, and if you weren’t so young and innocent it would ring a bell” along with her sister and friend were all stars in a series of porn movies. The man behind the movies was a German [another thing that recurs in Bolaño] named Helmut Bittrich. Helmut treated them well, and the whole production company felt like a (weird, certainly) family. In fact, Connie made films even when she was pregnant with Lalo (lacto-porn!).
Connie had tried legitimate theater (even Broadway!), but eventually, her career went towards porn. The bulk of the story is given over to (graphic) descriptions of all of her films. But the most interesting section is about Bittrich’s understanding of “the sadness of the phallus.” After all those graphic scenes we get this remarkably poetic moment:
he’s naked from the waist down, his penis hangs flaccid and dripping. Behind the actor, a landscape unfolds: mountains, ravines, rivers, forests, towering clouds, a city, perhaps a volcano, a desert.
Pajarito Gómez is the male actor described above. He is the primary male in all of the porn films. He wasn’t well endowed, but he had a special kind of presence on screen. As the story ends, Lalo goes in search of Gómez and finds him easily. They share a moment, watching movies and reconstructing the past.
It’s an interesting story, one that fully fits within the Bolaño landscape. Bolaño is pretty obsessed with porn, and this story is obviously no exception. It may not be the best introduction to Bolaño’s work, and yet in many ways, it’s pretty much Bolaño in a nutshell.
Hi Roberto,
Thanks for your amusing review of the Space Negros-Generic Ethnic Muzak CD. It’s funny for me to realize that all of that music was produced and recorded almost 3 decades ago. The reason this music exists is that I was hired by an architectural firm in Cambridge MA (The Architects Collaborative) that was successfully doing building projects in far away places … Khulafa Street in downtown Bagdad, the Kuwait News Agency, a project in Kuala Lumpur, etc. The firm was producing 15-minute video presentations for their clients which was a new concept at the time. This was to supplement the 3-D models and drawings that they did to show their proposals and I was hired to compose “East meets West” music tracks for the soundtracks which complimented their architecture. After doing a few of these low budget projects, I decided that it’d be more fun for me to do “ethnic generic muzak” covers of my favorite obscure (and not so obscure) ’60s tracks and pass them off as original music. It worked and fortunately I never got caught–although covering the Easybeats hit “Friday On My Mind” was pushing the limit.
But the strangest unexpected repercussion was when the firm played the video for the leader of Iraq, who wanted TAC to pass on a compliment to the composer for the last piece in the videotape. It turns out that selection was none other than my cover version of the Stooges “We Will Fall” and the person was … Saddam Hussein. Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.
So there’s the behind the scenes story about this CD (and vinyl edition from the mid-80s). Thanks for picking up on this curious audio artifact!
Arf Arf,
Erik
This is without question the coolest Comment I have received on the blog. And it is absolutely the craziest true story I’ve heard. Thanks Eric, for posting. I have to say I did always wonder about the origins.
And for those playing at home, my name’s Paul, not Roberto, but Erik Lindgren can call me what he likes.
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the quick response! The wonders of the world-wide web…
Yes, that anecdotal story behind the “Generic Ethnic Muzak” CD is objectively pretty darn freaky. Five years ago, I had a 50th birthday retrospective concert at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge MA and projected some videos that used my original scores I played some of that Bagdad building project video with the “generic ethnic muzak” soundtrack which entertained everybody … and then there was a large gasp in the audience when footage of their supreme leader Saddam Hussein was shown (TAC had to include that acknowledgment for political reasons).
Keep up the good work with your blogs!
Erik
Oh rats! I got this awesome response from you which mentioned a quick response and I missed it. Sometimes the web overloads me!
That whole thing with Saddam is so crazy! As is the fact that he was not our enemy at the time. (But heck, this isn’t a political website).
Thanks so much for sharing that great story. My next step is to check out some Birdsong of the Mesozoic CDs (I’d always loved the bandname [I live din Boston for 5 years, so that must have been my exposure to the name, right?] but didn’t know a thing about them, and now I have investigated even more, I’m even more intrigued).
Cheers
Paul,
Mucho gracias for the message and yes, the wonders of the world wide web is a magnificent forum for communication! Cuneiform Records recently released a 2-CD retrospective of Birdsongs work from the early/mid ’80s which is a good place to start. Been here in Boss-town since the early ’70s when I attended college here and never left.
I still get a good chuckle out of realizing that our Iraq nemesis was a fan of the Space Negros. Wonder if the NY Times would like to break that historical (hysterical?) story.
Erik
[…] of Lalo Cura” I had read this story before as well. Lalo Cura is a major figure in 2666, but he seems unrelated to this character (this story was […]
[…] raped… until in this case Rafael Pancho Expósito was born (A similar story was told about Lalo Curo). The confusing thing about this section is that the story of Don Pedro and Pancho ends and it […]